FNL: How Did I Get Here?

Coach Taylor is back in the groove with his team after last week’s squeaker, but all is not well.

Seems his paycheck is a little short. Like, almost 40 percent less than he made last year. Apparently Coach forgot to talk money when Buddy wooed him back to Dillon, and oops, the booster club fund was depleted by paying off McGregor.

Coach reluctantly accepts the vacant athletic director’s post to earn some extra money, but – surprise – it turns out Buddy was mistaken when he promised the job would be a breeze. Guess Buddy hasn’t been talking with the soccer coach, who seems to think her girls deserve some decent equipment.

She makes Coach a promise: “I’m going to be in here every fricking day until my girls get what they need.”

This is apparently the role Rosie O’Donnell was considered for, and I must say, Rosie would have been scarier, but I think it was better to go with someone who blends in more believably at Dillon High.

Meanwhile, Coach kicks Tim off the team for missing a week of practice. Matt takes up with a new girl, and Jason suffers from an early mid-life crisis.

And we see how far Landry’s dad, Officer Clarke, will go to protect his son.

Jason, Tim and Lila arrive back in Dillon after their trip to Mexico, and just seeing them in Jason’s truck, you can tell they’re back together in that Texas Forever way. Lila’s got her head on Tim’s shoulder, and Jason is looking at them fondly, and it’s a terrific moment.

But Jason has realized he’s got to accept that he’s in a wheelchair, and he’s not sure where his life goes from here.

Coach temporarily coaxes him back as an assistant, but Jason knows he can’t really start over on the same football field where all his dreams came to an end, so he turns to Lila for advice.

Lila is in church, wearing yet another tight, low-cut dress, when Jason shows up to talk. The thing about Dillon, he says, is that no one ever changes. In fact, Lila is the only person he knows who has changed her life. How’d she do it?

She starts to say the obvious, given the surroundings and the peace she found in becoming born-again, but Jason isn’t here for that.

“I don’t need saving,” he tells her. “I’m not here to talk to God.”

And bless her, she lets it go. “You just do it,” she says.

But clearly, Jason’s dad hasn’t been able to let anything go. In what has to be one of the most painful scenes ever filmed for this show, Mr. Street plays Jason’s old football tapes when the gang gathers to celebrate Jason’s 19th birthday. That agile QB running across the screen has nothing to do with the young man in the wheelchair, and Jason hands the tapes to Coach as he leaves, suggesting the JV quarterbacks might want to watch them.

Coach has always been good at understanding Jason, and he correctly guesses that Jason’s quitting the team. It’s a terrifically underplayed scene, with Coach assuring Jason that coaches learn as much from players as players learn from coaches. And he hopes he didn’t let Jason down. Which echoes that episode in the first season, when Jason is lying in a hospital bed, newly paralyzed, apologizing for letting down Coach.

“You lift up everyone around you,” Coach tells Jason as he walks out the door, and I was tearing up just a little.

But Coach doesn’t have any tears to spare for Tim, who’s been tossed off the team for missing practice. It seems like Jason could have spoken up, seeing as Tim missed practice because he was busy saving Jason’s life and all, but Tim’s on his own.

He never explains why he was gone, either, just looks mournfully at his empty dressing room locker and heads off for another beer.

Later, when Lila asks him for help with her latest Christian charity project – Santiago, the kid she met in juvie who’s now working for Buddy – he answers with a big Duh.

Seems Santiago has never played football but Buddy’s convinced he’s got the makings of a tight end, if he could just figure out how to catch the ball. Tim’s feeling a little sorry for himself and not so sure he wants to help somebody make the team that just booted him, but Lila suggests he think about someone besides himself.

Tami suggests Tim needs to think about those two biology tests he missed while he was in Mexico.

Big brother Billy accompanies Tim to her office, trying to fill in as a father figure even though he’s barely more than a kid himself. Still, when Tim finds Tami’s breast pump as they wait for her to arrive, Billy gamely tries to explain the puzzling piece of equipment. It’s for “ladies udders,” he soberly tells Tim. Tami breezes in and casually takes the pump before starting in on Tim’s dismal academic prospects.

Billy tries to daddy-up. “I am going to be squeezing his testicles until he’s bleeding term papers,” he promises, offering a visual image I could have done without before he admits the real reason he’s there.

Couldn’t Tami pressure Coach to put Tim back on the team?

No can do, she tells him.

But Smash feels no such compunction, cornering Coach to admit that, sure Tim drinks too much and he’s late to practice and he’s disrespectful, but can’t they cut him some slack? “I need him.”

Even though Tim and Smash are different – Tim’s not Smash-a-licious, for one thing – Smash understands that they both need football.

Tim takes it all in, turning his soulful charm on Smash’s mama and sisters, but he’s not one for talking. Still, when he sees Santiago, without pads or a helmet, hurtling himself into those tackling dummies, he walks over to offer some advice.

Soon Santiago is taking Tim down, and they’re having some good, clean boy fun when coach walks by and invites Santiago to practice.

What about me? Tim asks. Coach just looks at him.

“Not even close.”

Off the field, Tami is struggling with her sister and her return to work.

Sister Shelly is a free spirit, well-traveled and eco-conscious, and while she’s arrived to take care of Gracie when Tami goes back to work, no one can push your buttons like your sister, and Tami’s feeling it.

Not that she doesn’t love Gracie, but “I’m cooking, I’m working and I’m breast-feeding. That’s what I’m doing,” she laments. She’ll spend the next 16 years raising Gracie, “and then she’s going to turn into Julie and be mean to me.”

No one ever said motherhood was pretty.

Neither is teen romance.

Julie slips up to the counter when Matt’s working at the Alamo Freeze and tries to make amends. “I wanted to apologize for, like, everything.” Matt’s noncommittal, maybe because he’s still hurt from the way Julie ran off with The Swede, or maybe because there’s a new cheerleader in town who has made it clear she’s interested in the Panther quarterback.

They’re parked outside Jason’s birthday party, talking about cheerleader Lauren’s failed romances, when Matt impulsively kisses her. I couldn’t tell if he was overwhelmed by hormones or just wanted to shut her up, but whatever. He pulls back, but Lauren quickly moves in.

This happens just as Julie and Tyra walk past, and Julie looks absolutely stricken as she sees that the boyfriend she tossed aside is getting along fine without her.

Tyra is the perfect friend/big sister, taking Julie by the hand and suggesting they head to Tyra’s house for some ice cream and a therapeutic showing of Thelma and Louise. Tyra’s looking a little wistful about Landry, too, but she’s got nothing on his misery. His dad tries to snap him out of it.

“Girls can be squirrely that way, especially the cute ones,” he offers, and I couldn’t tell if he genuinely feels bad for Landry or if he’s just relieved Tyra did what he told her to do.

Later, when he hears that fibers found on the body fished out of the river match the upholstery in mid-70s GMC wagons – the model Landry drives – he urges Landry to be honest. But he looks blindsided when a tearful Landry admits, “I didn’t mean to do it, Dad.”

This is great casting. They really look like father-and-son, and Officer Clarke’s palpable anguish at his decision to protect his son instead of doing his duty as a cop has totally changed my mind about the character.

“Get in the car. Follow me. Right now.”

Landry climbs into his murderwagon and follows his dad’s taillights to a deserted canyon, watching in silence as his father mutters a “May God forgive us” and torches the car.

I don’t know how they’ll explain this away, as I think it looks suspicious when a car matching the description of the probable murder vehicle suddenly turns up burned to a crisp, but then I’m not a cop. Maybe that special investigator called in from Midland to handle the case won’t look at it that way.

I know lots of fans have hated the Landry-Tyra-murder storyline, but what do you think now? Is it starting to catch on, or do you still feel like it’s wrong for the show?